EASY BETA 0.63

Easy is the so-called public terminal viewer for Hyper-G: it allows to view
information in Hyper-G utilizing location and synchronisation information that
can be added to Hyper-G data, such data currently being ignored with standard
WWW viewers such as NetScape, Mosaic, Amadeus, Harmony, etc.

Thus, Easy allows to prepare extremely nicely laid out and time presentations
and can be used with various interfaces including of course a mouse, but also
touch sensitive screens and others.


Main FEATURES of EASY include:
  * Hyper-G communication
  * Using Easy adminstrator and document tools, authors can create new
    pagestyles and assign styles to documents. New styles can be uploaded
    to a Hyper-G server.
  * Different levels of functionality with increasing power to control
    presentations are provided (simple attribute changes, style creation, 
    layout script)
  * Automatic styles are chosen for documents without layout information.
    Easy administrators can define new standard styles by adding 
    style selection rules, see rules.doc
  * Document caching (both temporary and persistent) keeps cached files
    on disk and uses them in later sessions)
  * simple navigation (mouse, touchscreen, trackball)
  * EASY follows the Hyper-G viewer distribution policy:  it is free for
    personal use. If integrated into commercial products that are sold
    licensing arrangements with the IICM have to be made. For details see the
    distribution policy of Amadeus or Harmony.

REQUIREMENTS:

Hardware:
powerful PC (e.g. Pentium), 16MB RAM, true color graphics board, soundboard,
direct access to the network (Hyper-G).

Easy has been tested on PCs with configuration:  
   Pentium, 100MHz, 32MB RAM, SoundBlaster, Windows NT 3.5
   VLB 486DX2, 66 MHz, 16MB RAM, SoundBlaster, Windows NT 3.5
   Intel 486, 66 Mhz, 8MB RAM, Windows 95 and Windows 3.1

Software:
Windows (Windows 3.1, Windows f. Workgroups, Windows-NT 3.5x, Windows 95)
Win32s (pw1118.exe) has to be installed on Windows 3.x systems.
MCI driver to play .WAV and .MID files.
Video for Windows MCI driver to play .AVI files.

INSTALLATION:

Download easyb063.zip to your PC:
easyb063.zip is available via anonymous ftp at iicm.tu-graz.ac.at in 
directory pub/Hyper-G/Easy

Win32s Installation for Windows 3.xx only:
Start pw1118.exe in a new temporary directory.
Start setup.exe in this directory and follow instructions of Win32s setup.

Open a MSDOS shell:
Make directory \easy
cd \easy
Unzip easyb063.zip 

Windows:
Start program with easy.exe (using File Manager
or create an icon for easy.exe (using program manager under Windows)).

Select ok for anonymous login or enter your Hyper-G login and password 
and then ok. The collection ~anonymous on Server hgiicm.tu-graz.ac.at
will be displayed as default entry page.

Use Alt-F4 to stop the program.

CONFIGURATION:
Edit the text file easy.ini to change default Server and start page.
The standard style configuration is written in file main.sty .
The file style.doc contains information about contents of this file.

DOCUMENTATION:
easy.doc            chapter about Easy from Hyper-G book 
style.doc               style description format and introduction of styles
sync.doc                sync script format
rules.doc               explains definition of style rule

BUGS:

This is beta test software, that means there will be bugs. We are very
interested in bug reports and comments. Please send electronic mail to

	  gnagler@ihm.tu-graz.ac.at 

with a concise description of the error, INCLUDING what you did to
generate it. Please try to re-produce the error.
Look into easy.log to see if Easy wrote error messages.

MISSING FEATURES IN BETA VERSION
Some features are currently under construction or will be added in future:
* text viewer that supports advanced features of HTML, HTF (tables, formula,...)
* MPEG video player and .AU audio player
* local database to keep a small subset of the network (for times when
  network does not work) and large documents (movies, sound, images) that 
  can not be transfered to a public terminal in acceptable short time.
* access to WWW, WAIS, GOPHER
* visual display and audio effects (fade in/out)
* new styles (RandomImagePage, PanoramaPage, GeographicMapPage ...)
* advanced cluster arrangement

WARRANTY:

Copyright 1995 Institute for Hypermedia Systems (IHM) 
Graz Joanneum Research, Austria and Institute for Information Processing
and Computer Supported New Media (IICM) of Graz University of Technology.
This software is provided "as-is" and without warranty of any kind,
express, implied or otherwise, including without limitation, any
warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
In no event shall the Institutes mentioned in the copyright notice
be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any
damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits,
whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action,
arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this
software.


  Guenter Nagler
12 Feb 1996